Since 2011, global natural rubber market has remained over supplied with surplus amounting to 220,000 tons in 2011, 410,000 tons in 2013 and expected to soar to about 540,000 tons in 2014. Affected by this, global natural rubber prices have been falling. In 2013, natural rubber futures prices in China plummeted by 41.2% over 2011, and is expected to continue to decline.

Currently, global natural rubber consumption markets are mainly concentrated in China, Europe, India and the United States, with the four countries and regions making up 59.6% of global natural rubber consumption in 2013. Among them, China was the largest consumer, reaching up to 4.156 million tons, or 34.9% of the world's total.

However, limited by planting region, climate and so on, global natural rubber production is primarily concentrated in Southeast Asia including Thailand, Indonesia and Vietnam and African countries. In relative terms, output of natural rubber in China is rather low, only 856,000 tons in 2013, or 7.3% of global total.

Due to grave imbalance between market supply and demand, China imports most of natural rubber from abroad, with import volume totaling 2.4723 million tons in 2013, an increase of 13.6% year on year. Among them, 87.9% came from Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia over the same period.

In recent years, China has been expanding rubber planting area. Rubber trees which were planted in 2005-2008 will be tapped in succession from 2014, and then output of natural rubber in China will increase dramatically, with the output expected to exceed 1 million tons in 2016.